Does/did anyone else live in a family with a 'weekly' menu plan?

Cafe Society
1

By the time I reached grade school years, my mother declared she hated the task of deciding menus for the family. She didn’t object to the cooking/shopping part (my older sibs had for years pretty much already taken over the dishwashing/clean-up tasks under her supervision) but she said she just couldn’t deal with having to think up menus. I think this was in part because, looking back, we kids were damn vocal and diverse in out desired choices and quick to complain “You always do what Johnny wants!” and such.

So she gave each day a ‘theme’ and every Thursday dinner we could all suggest a meal that fit with the theme for the various days the next week, and she’d watch mostly without interfering (she’d occasionally veto some suggestions as too expensive or time consuming or otherwise impractical) as we all fought it out. Then we’d voted between the surviving choices – She wouldn’t ever vote herself, but Dad got two votes when necessary to break ties. (We did this on Thursdays because Friday was always her main shopping day.)

The ‘themes’ were nothing more than what the main ingredient of the entree would be. I still remember them to this day, more than sixty years later:
Sunday: beef
Monday: chicken
Tuesday: fish
Wednesday: pasta or beans
Thursday: eggs/breakfast items
Friday: pig products
Saturday: sandwiches

Obviously there’d be some overlap, like there’d be beef in a Wednesday spaghetti/meatballs, or tuna or ham/cheese sandwiches on a Saturday, but overall it actually worked out fine.

It gradually broke down as the children ‘aged out’ of our house and headed off to school/jobs/marriages/whatever – but little remnants still linger in our various households. For example, one of my sisters stuck to the Monday Chicken dishes religiously.

So, does anyone else have a system like this for simplifying menu choice? Doesn’t have to be organized exactly the same wat (like always Chinese food every other Tuesday) or cover every day (Like the only rule is hamburgers every Saturday.)

2

For me, it’s waffles for breakfast Sunday/Wednesday, small vegetarian pizza for dinner Friday and a bowl of Rice Chex for a midnight snack. Otherwise I let the spirit move me.

3

Heheh, nah. My mom worked as a telephone operator and her schedule varied week to week. So after I was about ten or so, she’d start informing me what I was supposed to cook either through a note or telling me directly on the nights I needed to cook for my dad and siblings. On the nights she was home, she’d let us know that she was cooking X. If I didn’t want that, I could fend for myself.

Though, your mom’s system didn’t seem as bleak as what I had envisioned when I imagined a “weekly” menu plan. I was expecting a rotation of seven dishes.

The only day we have set aside for anything is Sunday. We normally make something from scratch on Sunday and figure out what that’s going to be before she goes shopping on Friday or Saturday. The rest of the week we start negotiating how dinner will be handled sometime after lunch.

4

We plan our meals for the week, but we choose them depending on what’s on sale and what is in our freezer - plus new recipes we’ve found.

No seafood in the plan in the OP - wouldn’t work for us.

5

Our family’s plan didn’t cover the whole week, but the four days from Friday to Monday. We are a Catholic family, so Friday it was either fish or pasta (though sometimes with meat, like spaghetti bolognese, we weren’t that strict). Saturday was traditional stew or soup day (not only in our family, but for many other Germans too), so we mostly had pea, lentil or bean soup. Sunday was the special meal of the week, always meat, a beef or a pork roast, schnitzel or steak. Monday, we usually ate left overs from Sunday.

I have been living alone most of my adult life, have been vegetarian for almost 30 years and adopted none of that plan. I cook whatever I want on any day. But my sister has family with two (now grown-up) kids, and I could imagine that there are remnants of those old customs in her cooking plan.

6

We didn’t have a strict plan, but every erev Shabbat (Friday night) was a big, fancy meal-- the way some families did Sunday dinner, but also with some rituals, and always with challah. It was a meat meal, unless it was during Shavuot or on my birthday Shavuot is a festival week when dairy should be served, and we always got to pick the meal on our birthdays, and I always picked a dairy meal.

The three favorites for Shabbat were brisket, roast beef (a different cut from brisket, and cooked differently), and roast chicken. If we had guests, and my mother could find it kosher, we might have something adventurous, like pheasant, or venison. My mother could cook these things quite well in spite of doing them infrequently. We were not adventurous as a family, so we didn’t have them regularly. Price was, I’m sure, a factor as well.

Sometimes my mother brought home lamb or goat, if it were on sale, but no one was necessarily happy about it (other than my father, who liked goat).

Meat during the week might be ground beef used to stuff cabbages or vegetables-- it was mixed with rice, so it went pretty far, and if it were “choice” meat, or an inferior cut, it wouldn’t be that expensive. We also had baked chicken, which was chicken parts, not a whole chicken, and cooked in the frying pan, but slow-cooked, with the lid on, so it wasn’t fried, which is why I guess my mother called it baked.

Once a week, we usually had mac & cheese-- NOT from a box-- from scratch, and it was heavenly. It was sort of a casserole, and the main dish. Occasionally, we got other cheese, or cheese-&-egg casseroles. Usually had these twice a week.

Every meal had a salad of fresh vegetables, usually Iceberg lettuce, carrots & tomatoes (from the garden in the summer and fall), and one cooked veggie, often broccoli or sweet potatoes, sometimes asparagus.

We always had either bread or potatoes dressed with parsley, light salt, and butter or margarine.

My mother carefully wrapped and saved leftover portions. Meat might show up on sandwiches in our lunches when we were young enough that we didn’t make them ourselves.

Thursday, the day before Shabbat, we had to clear out all the leftovers. We sat down at the kitchen table as my mother pulled things out of the freezer or fridge from the week, and we claimed them. We didn’t worry about dairy & meat at the same table-- supposedly, no one had them at the same meal, but, well, the truth was the kitchen was just kosher so certain relatives would visit, not because my parents themselves cared.

I never picked a meat on Thursday, so I always had to have milk or yogurt, or if there was some bread, then I had to have PB on it (no problem).

When I was in the 5th grade, and my mother was back in school for her PhD, we started having more casseroles and pot roasts or baked chicken with veggies, because my mother would prepare them in the morning, and leave them inthe fridge. I got home from school around 3:30, and there’d be a note about what time and temp to put dinner in for. I moved the pan to the oven, and set it.

Meals were very predicatible around this time.

7

My son has suggested things like ordered in pizza on Fridays. Problem is that my wife and I like that form of pizza as an occasional treat, or even a celebration food and trying to watch our weight and while we like it, we really don’t want it as part of a regular weekly food.

We also had meatless Fridays during some Lent times of the year, which usually meant the main meal of that day was lobster.

8

I don’t think we had quite such a strict plan, but we would always have fish on Fridays (often fish and chips from the chip shop), ‘Saturday tea’ which was the only meal we ate in front of the TV and involved a cold platter of prawns, crab, pate, crusty bread, pickles and cream cakes - I think the idea was to give Mum a day off from cooking. Then a proper roast dinner on Sunday followed by cold meat and chips on Monday, using up the left over roast meat from Sunday.

These days my wife and I plan menus for Monday - Thursday so we don’t have to think about it, and save Friday for whatever we might fancy as an end of week treat.